


Almost Normal

by Tessa_Harrison



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Family Issues, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7797097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessa_Harrison/pseuds/Tessa_Harrison
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan's life is thrown into turmoil after the death of his mother. Finding out he's related to the Yukimura family and being thrown into that situation only makes a sucky situation worse. How do you deal with living in that shadow?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this 2 years ago. I never finished it but after rediscovering it and talking to people, I was encouraged to start posting it.
> 
> This is for all the people who told me to share.

Dan Taiichi kept peeking over at the man standing next to him on the train. It was strange to see someone who looked so similar to himself. He wondered if that’s what he’d look like in thirty years. He’d always wondered just how much he resembled this man. After all, he knew he hadn’t exactly taken after his mother. At all.

The thought of his mother hurt. Hot tears burned his eyes but he refused to let them fall, trying as hard as he could to will them away. He need to be strong. Be like Akutsu-sempai. Like Sengoku-sempai. Be anyone else, just not himself. He didn’t know where he was going but he could do this. He had to. He could be strong. Had to be strong. There would be no more crying over things he couldn’t change.

Like this. He couldn’t change this. Even if he could, he wasn’t sure he would. This was his mother’s last request, for both him and his father. She wanted this, for them to live together and for Dan to get to know both his father and his father’s family. Apparently he had a brother who was only a couple of years older. The thought made his head spin, made him feel sick. He just wanted to go home, to see his little sister Sakura. It had never been a big deal, that they had had different fathers. Not until their mother got sick anyways.

The train slowed. A voice on the system announced they were approaching some station Dan had never even heard of before. “This is our stop,” the man next to him said, his voice soft to the point of barely being audible.

Dan gave a little nod, indicating he’d heard. He clutched his bag, not wanting to lose it. Right now, it was all he had. He would not lose it. He couldn’t. If that happened, he might as well jump onto the tracks and wait for the next train because right now, this bag was the only lifeline he had to himself. It didn’t matter that the rest of his things were supposed to be brought over by a mover in the morning.

He knew he was in Kanagawa. Still, it felt like he’d stepped into an entirely new and different world when he left the train. “My son plays tennis,” the man, his father Dan had to correct himself, said. It was painfully obvious the man was trying to start a conversation. The awkwardness was enough to make Dan wish the man had stayed silent. At best this was awkward and there was no need to make it even more so. “We’ll get you transferred to his old middle school in a few days.”

Dan gave another little nod. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to play tennis for a school that wasn’t Yamabuki. The idea just didn’t sit right with him. Besides, tennis season was over. Sure, people would still be practicing but it was only in preparation for next year. And this was Kanagawa. It was already a foregone conclusion who the powerhouse of the region was. Everything was Rikkai and only Rikkai here. He’d seen a few of their players before but had never met any of them, not even on the tennis court. He was honestly a little relieved about that. They were terrifying and it didn’t matter that the insane powerhouses from a few years ago had moved onto high school. The group they’d left behind was almost as bad.

The streets were foreign to him. People waved to him and the man, his father he had to remind himself again, waved back. It looked like a nice, friendly place. He wanted to like it. He really did. This just wasn’t home. All he wanted to do was run back to the train and have it take him back to the apartment he’d grown up in. Not that Sakura or his stepfather would be there. With both his mother and Dan gone, the two had moved to a little town near Sendai where Nakamura had family. The only things even left in that apartment now were the boxes with his name on them. Even they wouldn’t be there after tomorrow.

It was a little house, nestled between two more little houses. They were all traditional looking and beautiful, exactly the sort of house his mother had always dreamed of having. Dan wished he was able to hate it on sight. Why couldn’t it be ugly and terrible? Why couldn’t it look as miserable as Dan felt? Instead it looked like a lovely home.

It just wasn’t his home.

A woman was waiting inside the entryway of the house. Without even being told, Dan knew exactly who she was. This was his father’s wife. If he’d been dreading this before, well, now he just wanted to disappear off the face of the Earth. Was there a way to stop this from ever happening?

He bowed as deeply as he could. “Thank you for allowing me into your home.” A good impression was the only was he was going to survive this. Not that he had any doubts that this was going to be a miserable experience.

She didn’t say a word. An arm wrapped around his shoulders. He knew it was his father. Dan stared at the floor, letting himself be directed through the house. Even the floors were pretty. Somehow, that just made him feel even worse. The bottom of a closed door came into view.

“This will be your room, Taiichi.” There was a pause before his name. And after. It was as if his father was afraid of something. Dan didn’t see what the man had to be afraid of. It wasn’t like his father’s life had been torn to pieces or anything. “You’ll be rooming with my son.” A heavy pause and then, “my other son.”

He leaned over Dan and knocked. Before Dan could react, the man opened the door. “We’re coming in.”

As soon as the door opened, Dan felt eyes on him. He looked up to get a peek at the guy who was his new brother. For the rest of his life, he’d wished he hadn’t.

There wasn’t one set of eyes watching him but three. He’d heard of these three, had seen them before in passing and had watched some of their matches. They were even scarier in person.

Rikkai’s famed Demons were all in front of him. One was seated at the desk, the other two on the bed.

Dan swallowed hard. One of these three was his brother. Dan wondered if there was a way this could get worse. And then it did.

“I’ll leave you boys be.”

The door clicked closed behind him, the sound deafening. Dan couldn’t help but flinch. He wished he wasn’t being watched so carefully.

“The resemblance is remarkable,” the one at the desk said.

“My hair does not point in every direction,” one of the two on the bed answered. It didn’t take a genius to figure out which was was Dan’s half-brother. The hair alone was honestly a dead giveaway. Actually seeing the face made it all click in a way that just hadn’t before.

“I...I’m standing right here.” He felt the need to point that out. Besides, it was rude to talk about someone like they weren’t there. Dan shifted his bag, it growing heavy on his shoulder. One of the others snorted.

“You can set your bag over there,” Yukimura Seiichi said, waving to a corner of the room.

The corner was empty. It looked odd and out of place compared to the rest of the room. Which wasn’t a half bad summary of Dan’s own feelings at the moment. Odd and out of place. The fact that this was all that was left for him was too much. Just a little empty corner, squeezed into a place where he wasn’t wanted. He turned and left. Anywhere was better than this place. It took all his willpower to not just run out of the house. At least he was able to wait until he was outside.

He didn’t mean to cry. He couldn’t stop. Why? Why him? Why now? What had he done to deserve this? Everything had happened so fast. All he wanted was his life to go back to normal.

Normal wasn’t going to come anytime soon. He was stuck with this lot in life. He wished he had a phone. All he wanted was to hear a friendly voice right now. It was silly and childish. He knew that. But maybe it would help. At least he wouldn’t feel like everything was against him. He even had a phone and it was in his bag, buried at the bottom. It just didn’t have service, the line having been terminated the day before. The man who had raised him, who Dan had seen as his father, had said it wouldn’t be right to keep Dan on that family plan. That because Dan was joining a new family, he would need to join whatever plan they had.

But still...he pulled it out of his bag and turned it on. Sakura’s smiling face, mashed up next to his own, greeted him. They’d been at a festival and she’d suggested they take the picture. Even now, he looked back at the memory fondly. They’d had fun, one of the last times he could truly remember being happy. Mom hadn’t been sick and everything in life hadn’t been spiraling out of control back then.

A small smile settled on his face as he started scrolling through his photos. These were the people he wanted to see, the ones he wanted to talk to. They didn’t look at him like he was a freak or like he’d ruined everything. Why couldn’t he live with a friend? He knew why. None of them would have taken him in. He’d had plenty of friends but none of them had been particularly close, especially not after the situation with his mom.

There had been one. He’d had a friend who would have taken him in. But there was no way Dan would have asked him. 

He sighed, turning off the phone. His battery was close to dead and while the phone couldn’t make calls, it was still precious. Part of him knew he should attempt to return to the Yukimura house. Not that he even had a clue where the place was or how to get back. Throwing the phone back into his tennis bag, he dug through it, looking for his sketchbook.

Yukimura. Kanagawa.

He’d known those two things, had already been told them but somehow he hadn’t made the connection. He felt like a complete idiot for not realizing that.

He just wanted to forget, to lose himself in something else for a little bit so he wouldn’t end up dwelling on things he couldn’t change.

Finding an empty spot in the sketchbook was hard. He’d need to get a new one soon but he didn’t want to. This book held the turmoil that had been the last year of his life, the one place he’d been able to turn to when the world felt like it would crush him.

“You are definitely turning into a headache.” The voice was cold, colder than any other Dan had heard. Even though he’d only heard it once before, he recognized the voice. It was rude and petty but in that moment Dan made a decision to focus on his sketch, completely ignoring the other person. Besides, he really did need to focus. Getting the shape of an eye was hard and he knew getting it just right was vital. If he screwed this up, he might as well start over because there was no way the sketch would turn out okay.

“Do you always ignore people who are talking to you?” Dan could hear the annoyance in the other’s voice.

“Except you’re not talking to me,” Dan replied. It came out ruder than he planned but it wasn’t exactly like the other was being polite to him either. “You’re talking at me.” He frowned, erasing the line he’d just drawn.

“You’re going to regret that,” the older said from his spot practically hovering over Dan’s shoulder.

“Saying that? I’m not sure I will, Yukimura-san.” Dan wondered where this was coming from. If someone had told him a few months ago that he’d speak to Rikkai’s great Yukimura Seiichi so rudely, Dan wouldn’t have believed them. And it wasn’t like he could call this arrogant guy ‘Nii-san’. He’d rather die.

“No, that line. You’re going to make those eyes too big and it’ll be completely wrong for her face.”

The anger at hearing those words burned. He knew what these eyes looked like far better than Yukimura ever would. After all, these were the eyes Dan had seen nearly every single day of his life. “They won’t be.”

“They’re going to be too big.”

Dan looked up, unable to keep the glare off his face as he stared back at Yukimura. “Are my eyes too big for my face?” He snapped, unable to hold the anger back any longer.

Actually, now that he was looking at Yukimura Seiichi and from so close, Dan could see some of the resemblance. The most obvious was their shared hair color, a trait he now knew they’d both inherited from their shared father. Yukimura’s looked soft and wavy, quite pretty and feminine. Not at all like Dan’s own which at best was a crazy mess. The shapes of their faces were similar. Dan could see that his was rounder than Yukimura’s but he wondered what would happen over the next few years. He knew he still held some of the soft roundness of a child’s face. When he finally lost that would he end up looking as sharp and cutting as Yukimura?

His new half-brother was paler and built like a waif. Dan’s own build wasn’t much better but he was fairly sure he wasn’t quite as delicate looking. But then everyone knew about the story of Yukimura Seiichi, of how the guy had been seriously ill just a few years ago. Supposedly the guy had made a full recovery but how much of that had affected Yukimura? If he hadn’t been so sick, would he look more like Dan?

“A tad too big,” Yukimura answered, sounding almost amused for a moment. “Are you coming or do I need to send Tou-san out here to get you?”

Dan knew the right answer. It wasn’t one he particularly liked but he knew what he needed to do. It hurt to close his sketchbook. He didn’t want to give up, didn’t want to leave the place that was his mental safe zone. Very carefully he managed to cram it back into his tennis bag.

Walking a few steps behind Yukimura, Dan wondered if this was how a prisoner felt. Some of the boldness from earlier must have still been in his system because he found himself saying, “I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Yukimura paused for a moment. “Neither did we.”


	2. Chapter 2

Supper was an awkward affair. Dan could feel all eyes on him as the Yukimura family tiptoed around the elephant in the room. He knew he didn’t belong here. They all knew that. The fact that he stuck out was made all the more obvious by his seat, crammed into the corner between his new half-siblings.

Seiichi he’d seen already but this was Dan’s first look at his new younger sister. From what he could tell, she was about the same age as Sakura. However the two girls couldn’t have looked more different. Seeing this new sister, Natsuki, Dan could see how their shared father had strong genes because this sister actually looked like she could be Dan’s sister. The same hair (which he coming to assume as a trademark Yukimura thing), well, almost. Her hair was like Seiichi’s, long and wavy, giving her a soft look.

To be honest? Dan was glad that he lacked that softness. Anything that made him different from the rest of this family was good.

Not helping matters was the fact that throughout the meal, no one spoke. Well, almost. They had gone around the table at the start of the meal and introduced themselves but after that? Nothing.

Of course, after supper wasn’t any better. Everyone scattered, leaving Dan wondering where he could even go and what he could do. Being in Seiichi’s room was difficult but the family areas? Even worse.

Dan smiled, finding his salvation in the house’s small backyard. It was nothing special but he’d always dreamed of living in a place with a little bit of green. Out here, he finally felt like he could breathe. Did it make the situation any better? No, not really. But at least out here he didn’t feel like he was constantly walking on eggshells, waiting for someone to put him out of his misery. Although if someone did do that, at least he wouldn’t have to deal with this situation any longer.

How was he going to deal with this? As it was, the sky was growing darker and darker. He’d have to go in soon. Could he sleep out here instead? He could see himself living out here. It would suck in bad weather but it would be nicer than living inside with the others. Anything was better than being in that house...and he still had the rest of middle school and all of high school.

Unless he went to a boarding school.

The thought came out of nowhere, shocking Dan in all the best ways. A boarding school for high school. He could do that. Could see himself going somewhere near, somewhere far away. He’d only have to deal with this family occasionally. They could go back to their regular lives, the ones they’d had before today.

Having a plan made it easier for Dan to go back into the house when it finally became too dark to stay outside.

No one noticed him. At any other time, the thought would have made him sad. For once, he was relieved. Happy about that even. It didn’t change the fact that he had no place in the house where he could go. The best he had was that spot cleared in the corner of Seiichi’s room.

A futon had been laid out in Dan’s corner. He stared, wondering when that happened. Something about that bugged him. If it weren’t for the fact that he literally had nowhere else to turn, he’d walk out again.

Sitting his tennis bag next to the futon, Dan took a moment to actually look around the room. He didn’t have much, not at the moment, but he was able to tell that there was no room even for what little he did have. Besides, his stuff would always stick out in this room. It was 100% Yukimura Seiichi.

The door slid open, the sound almost deafeningly loud in the quiet room. It was instinct to look. He knew he’d see Seiichi there and he wasn’t at all surprised when that’s exactly who it turned out to be. The guy didn’t say a word to Dan as he entered, walking over to the desk that was pushed against the wall opposite Dan’s futon. Seiichi grabbed a notebook, opening it and scribbling something down inside.

“Yes.”

Dan glanced over from where he’d started to lay his things out on the futon.

“I spoke with Genichirou and Renji earlier and Renji said our best moment would be this weekend.”

It was impossible not to eavesdrop. Actually, was it eavesdropping when the person was being so obvious and was in the same room? Dan wasn’t actually sure about that. He knew the polite thing would be to leave but that didn’t seem fair. He’d been in the room first. Well, in this specific context anyways.

“I’m not sure. I think it might need to be pushed back or moved somewhere else.”

How long was this call going to take? Dan didn’t want to complain but it wasn’t as if he’d been asked if this was okay. Yes, the room was Seiichi’s. It wasn’t as if the guy was alone in the room anymore.

People always talked about Yukimura Seiichi like he was some sort of perfect tennis god, apparent illness and loss to Echizen Ryoma two years ago all but forgotten about. So far, Dan wasn’t sure how people had come to that conclusion because Seiichi was more rude than anything else in his opinion.

\---  
Intimidating. Terrifying. Rude.

Dan was fairly sure those words could apply to every member of his new family. The whole neighborhood. Basically everyone around him right now and while those words could also describe Akutsu-sempai, well, at least he was a nice guy under his gruff exterior. Here? There were no hidden layers of kindness.

And everyone was always watching. He couldn’t see them. They always looked away when he tried to catch peeking eyes but he could feel the weight of their gazes. And it came from everyone in the neighborhood. He could feel them watching him carry in the few boxes that tied Dan to his former life.

At least the house was empty. Both of his new siblings were off at school. His father was gone, having left for work before the sun even rose. Dan wasn’t sure if the man was trying to avoid the situation (not that Dan blamed the man for that but the thought stung more than Dan wanted to admit) or if he just worked long hours. It was probably a bit of both.

The biggest (and best) surprise had been his father’s wife. She’d left earlier, saying she had errands to run. He’d had to stay behind to wait for this truck.

If only the house could always be this empty.

He hadn’t been expecting anything but Dan was still disappointed that all he had was that small corner of Seiichi’s room. He’d folded the futon earlier, pushing it into the corner as much as possible to give himself a little room. Dan smiled at the little wall of boxes. They formed a small barrier between his “space” and the rest of the room. He knew he should probably unpack them but, well, then all he’d have would be a few empty boxes, a pile of clothes, his tennis gear, and some art supplies. Oh, and the rolled up futon. Couldn’t forget the one tiny concession he’d been given by the family of doom.

Alone in the bedroom, Dan was able to breathe a little. It gave him a chance to actually take a look at his new home. Three of the four walls were a warm and welcoming cream color. But the fourth...it was a shrine to the person who was Yukimura Seiichi. Accomplishments and accolades covered it, with a plethora of photos mixed in among them. One section held a bulletin board with a calendar and lists of names and numbers. Dan was sure they would make sense if he walked over there and took a moment to study them.

He kept glancing at the wall, marveling at just how much information was now so readily available to him. So much that he could have put to good use if he were still a Yamabuki student. A peek into his new life.

Instead, Dan decided to open one of his boxes, the one marked ‘art supplies’. Sifting through it carefully, he pulled out a few things and went to the little garden behind the house. He could only hope he’d be able to clear his head for a bit.


End file.
